My must read of the day is "‘You Can Keep Your Doctor’: Obamacare’s Next Broken Promise?" in Time:
But for the president, the real political pain may only be starting. Come 2014, the rest of the country may learn that another high-profile pledge was untrue. "No matter how we reform health care," Obama said in 2009, "we will keep this promise: if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period."
It’s not that simple. In order to participate in health-insurance exchanges, insurers needed to find a way to tamp down the high costs of premiums. As a result, many will narrow their networks, shrinking the range of doctors that are available to patients under their plan, experts say.
"Many people are going to find out that the second part of the promise — that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor — just wasn’t true," says Gail Wilensky, who directed the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs under President George H.W. Bush. Factcheck.org labeled the promise "misleading," noting that while the law doesn’t contain provisions designed to force people to pick new doctors, a switch may be inevitable for some. "The President simply can’t make this promise to anyone," the site wrote.
If keeping specific health plans matters to people as much as we've seen it does, the ability to keep your doctor will matter too.
Many of the people unhappy that they've been dropped from plans and forced into the exchanges didn't want more comprehensive policies because they are young and healthy and don't go to the doctor that often.
The people who will care about losing their doctor will be those who had existing coverage. Some will be sick or have pre-existing conditions. They'll be extra angry if they lose their doctors. And Obama will have another outraged constituency on his hands.